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Efficiency of plant-based acaricide gels compared to fluvalinate-impregnated strips for control of Varroa destructor in honey bee colonies

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Abstract

The Varroa mite is one of the most important pests of honey bee colonies. This study compares the efficiency of thymol-based acaricides with the tau-fluvalinate-based commercial treatment to control this mite species. Two experiments were conducted: (1) in the Fall, thymol-based gel was compared with a widely used acaricide, fluvalinate-impregnated strips (Apistan®), and (2) in the Spring, gels containing thymol-only, thymol + menthol + eucalyptus essential oil, and thymol + thyme essential oil were compared with fluvalinate-impregnated strips. In the first experiment, both treatments reduced Varroa mite infestation levels significantly after 70 days of their application compared to the control treatment. The results of the second experiment showed that thymol + thyme essential oil gel, thymol + menthol + eucalyptus essential oil gel, and Apistan strips had always higher efficiency on decreasing mite infestation levels of the selected colonies compared to the control treatment and thymol-only gel during their 7-week application. The results of this study demonstrate that plant-based acaricides for controlling Varroa mites in honey bee colonies have similar efficiency compared to the chemical control methods. Therefore, it is better to use these selected acaricides to reduce mite resistance to chemical control treatments in honey bee colonies.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the Research Council of the Isfahan University of Technology for financial support of this work. This study was also supported by the Ministry of Education, Youth, and Sports of the Czech Republic-MEYS (projects No. LM2015075, EF16_013/0001782, and 8120001-EIG CONCERT JAPAN). This work has also been supported by Charles University (Cooperatio-Environmental and Sustainability Research, project No. 270022). We would like to thank the reviewers for their comprehensive comments that improved our work.

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Author notes

  1. Jahangir Khajehali and Masoud M. Ardestani contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Plant Protection, College of Agriculture, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, 84156-83111, Iran

    Jahangir Khajehali, Nafiseh Poorjavad, Farid Shahim-Germi & Mahyar Kimiaie

  2. Barij Essence Medicinal Plants Research Centre, Kashan, Iran

    Alireza Bolandnazar

  3. Institute for Environmental Studies, Charles University in Prague, Benátská 2, Prague, CZ-12801, Czech Republic

    Masoud M. Ardestani

  4. Institute of Soil Biology and Biogeochemistry, Biology Centre of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Na Sádkách 7, České Budějovice, CZ-37005, Czech Republic

    Masoud M. Ardestani

Authors
  1. Jahangir Khajehali
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  2. Nafiseh Poorjavad
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  3. Alireza Bolandnazar
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  4. Farid Shahim-Germi
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  5. Mahyar Kimiaie
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  6. Masoud M. Ardestani
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Contributions

JK: conceptualization, validation, supervision; NP: conceptualization, validation; AB: methodology, investigation; FSH and MK: methodology, investigation, formal analysis; MMA: formal analysis, writing—original draft, writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Jahangir Khajehali or Masoud M. Ardestani.

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Khajehali, J., Poorjavad, N., Bolandnazar, A. et al. Efficiency of plant-based acaricide gels compared to fluvalinate-impregnated strips for control of Varroa destructor in honey bee colonies. Exp Appl Acarol 91, 57–67 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10493-023-00833-z

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